TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Belarusian authorities said Friday they are ready to investigate the death of a Polish soldier stabbed at the border last month, but have not received any necessary information from Poland.
A statement from the country’s border service said it would undertake a unilateral or joint investigation if Poland presented “concrete information.”
The soldier was stabbed last month on the eastern border with Belarus, the Polish army said on Thursday. It was previously said that the soldier was stabbed in the chest by a migrant who reached through the bars of the border barrier.
Poland’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Belarusian charge d’affaires on Thursday and demanded that Minsk authorities identify and hand over the soldier’s “murderer,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said.
The situation at the European Union’s eastern border is becoming increasingly tense under pressure from thousands of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa who are trying to push their way through a metal barrier that Poland erected in 2022 to seal the border .
According to the latest figures from the Polish Border Guard, there have been around 17,000 attempts to cross the border illegally this year.
A spokesman for the Warsaw Prosecutor’s Office, Piotr Skiba, said an autopsy conducted on Friday determined that the soldier, Mateusz Sitek, died of a stab wound to the lung that caused damage to the central nervous system. Media reports said he was 21.
